(Perpetual) Android Thread

I broke down and after much gnashing of teeth, picked a winner (for me) on the whole smartphone thing. That's right, it's a G1 / Android device.

--- Why G1 ---

In short - the plans are cheaper, the phones are cheaper, and the hack factor is much, much higher. Give it a few hours of tweaking, and it's better than any of the other phones out there (or heck, within the next year or two, ie this upgrade cycle).

This presumes that you're not getting a discount, or some sort of grandfathering :P, so real costs can be lower. YMMV. AFAIK, AT&T is least amenable to grandfathering for iphone. (Yes, the G1 can use non-G1 data plans with a simple APN switch).

Then there's device cost. Let's call it identical, for now, except the iPhone is stuck with 16gb while the other two devices can use 32gb sdmicro cards when those come out. (Yes, wait for WWDC, blahblahblah)

There's the interface concerns. While there's a multi-page thread in the soapbox regarding the benefits and drawbacks of multitasking, I'll just have to report that multitasking WORKS NOW. I had a podcast fired up, a IM service in the background, and was navigating using telenav on my G1. (May be possible on iPhone ... eventually). That being said, Android 1.5 is as slick as the iPhone once you learn the interface. A touch slower, though, but way faster than what I was using before.

We can look at cloud services.

I do like the idea of the Pre. I do. But I haven't heard much about their service model. And 'cloud' links already exist on the iPhone (mobile.me / google) and G1 (google). And I've already had my 'cloud' set up with Google (after they implemented their exchange functionality). I doubt that I'll give up all of the google apps just for a mobile device. So, no Pre.

And finally, hack factor. Sure, Cydia exists. But they're fighting Apple, tooth and claw. Meanwhile, the G1 is open source. Heck, there's a public release of Cupcake months before it came out. And you can tweak things quite a bit.

Therefore, for me, G1 wins. Cheapest, most hackable, most potential. What pushed me over the edge? Android 1.5. The (cup)cake is not a lie.

--- Getting it set up / Must Have Apps ---

So, I picked it up. First things first. Get this piece of junk from T-Mobile up to specs.

It came with the RC30 firmware out of the box. No on screen keyboard, not rooted so no tethering...

Utilities:Shopsavvy - Price checkerWikimobile - simplified wikipedia interfaceWeatherbug - weather appWifi Tethering for Root Users - Enough said. It works pretty well, too.Locate - Pure awesomeness. Your phone can 'learn' where you are/what you are doing, and then change configuration appropriately. No more turning the phone to silent when you are at work. Or at home. Etc.

Communications:fIRC chatPalringo

...

Anyways, that's me with the new toy to date. Still need to get a bigger sdmicro card (16gb on order), a silicone skin for it (got a screen protector already), a audio breakout cable for car use (right now I have a usb>3.5mm jack, but I'd like to charge + sound so that I can use it constantly), and get some more utilities for it.

In particular:

Better camera app .. I like some sort of control for exposure, no 'click' sound, etc.Notetaking app (and maybe twitter clients?) - still need recommends for one that will tweet for 'public' notes versus 'private' notes. Bonus if it can take voice notes and automatically transcribe them.

More Widgets. Cupcake supports widgets on homescreen, i'd love to have a twitter widget, or a weather widget, etc.

Better gesture commands. Especially in the Browser. I do like the iPhone / Mobile Safari tab management, and I don't have that on android. However, I really hate the 'display the page intact' bit. I miss the ability of Opera for Mobiles to rewrite pages into single column layouts. .. Oh wai, there's a beta out!

I'll have to get back to you on that last bit.

:P

Anyways, questions / comments / news, lmk.

EDIT:Detailed Rooting Instructions. (7-15-09) Be sure to have the following handy.

(You can reboot the device by pressing call-menu-hangup, or by removing the battery)

Reformat your SD Card w/ a FAT32 partition, and a EXT3 partition. If you're using a linux CD, 'gparted' is a good program to do so. You can do this by mounting the SD Card from the phone, or via a seperate USB > SD adapter.

Put the RC29 image (DREAMING.nbh) onto the SD Card. Also, copy HardSPL (renamed to update.zip if not so already) and the recovery image (rename it something you can type easily with a .img extension) onto the card as well.

Reboot the device. Hold the camera button when it reboots. You should see on-screen instructions on how to flash your phone at this point. Make sure you have plenty of battery power. Press the power(hangup) button to start this. DO NOT INTERRUPT THIS.

reboot

Once you are on the homescreen, type in telnetd and hit enter.

Connect to the market, and download a telnet app and connect to localhost.

Once this is done, reboot the phone. Hold down the home button while rebooting to enter the recovery image. Now we apply several updates. Wipe your phone before the first update

HardSPL (should be on your SD card already)Updated RadioNew firmware

...

A easy way to do this is to have the phone connected, and use the following dos commands. CD to your SDK directory, the 'tools' directory. Then, when you are ready to do an update, type in 'adb push (update name) /sdcard/update.zip'

I just recently got a G1 myself and I'm very happy with it. I've had a blackberry from work for a couple of years but it's always an older model. If I could get exchange to work with my G1, I would drop my blackberry in a heartbeat. The first app I got for the G1 was ChompSMS. I like it better than the included messaging app, especially with the built in keyboard and it now supports MMS.

I also installed PhoneFusion Voicemail+ and I like it so far. Oh yeah, if you like music, Shazam is a must. Unfortunately in my area I don't have 3G service so I'm stuck with EDGE for now. We're supposed to get it sometime in July I believe. I can't wait!

Interesting thread. I have been using an iphone since shortly after it was released, and really have enjoyed it. Though since the G1 release, it has definitely had my eye.

I was planning to make the pre my next phone, but once I found out you had to have one of the "everything" plans with sprint, I realized that was not the phone for me, at least for now. I am not paying $100 a month just for my line, when I have a family plan for that with tmobile.

So the other day I decided to try out the G1. I didnt want to get it from tmobile and get in a contract again, so I picked one up off craigslist for $150.

I have to say, from a longtime iphone user, I am REALLY impressed, in fact, I like the phone more than the iphone, which I gave to my wife with no regrets.

I can see how people would not like the G1 compared to the iphone and be dissapointed. Right away my wife said "yuck, it looks like linux", haha.

This is not a phone for the average joe. It is a total POS compared to the iphone in the "polish" category, but if you are the tinkerer type who loves to mess with stuff, and don't care about how "flashy" things are, you will love this phone.

My biggest concern, of course, was battery life, which I have found to be a big non issue. As long as I close out apps, and don't multitask like crazy, the battery life seems comparable to the iphone. Best thing to do is always back out of apps you dont want to remain open, and also use something like task switcher to see what is open.

I have the $35 data plan, and it has been pretty good, I have 3G everywhere I go where I live, and I routinely can do things like stream audio while I drive around...goodbye satellite.

Glad to see this thread, and I can't wait for the cupcake update. I plan to patiently wait, but if it gets to be too long I will probably root it.

Heh, I have the business plan 600, which comes with 400 messages of any type.

I'm not sure about battery life, until my multifunction (charge + audio) connection arrives, it seems that my drive in w/ nav and podcasts going sucks up about 15% of the battery life. Which is pretty meh. I'll need to put a charger at my desk at work, at this rate.

The $6 t-zones might have worked if you played with your APN. Maybe.

Also, looks like Android will be getting Opera for Mobiles 9.5, but it's not on the beta page yet.

the APN thing did not work, Tmobile is now actively looking for G1's that aren't on the G1 dataplan, and cutting off data. I was able to get the phone to activate with the tzones plan, but then it stopped working. Then if I turned off/on the phone it work work for about 10 sec, and then I would be notified again about the dataplan not being right.

I was a little irked, simply because they want $5 more a month over the other data plan, "just because", but I realized for the $35 plan, unlimited text is $15 and then the data plan normally is $20

well i have read that the unlimited data works for the most part, but some has cited issues i figured i might as well pay the 35, and get unlimited text since once in a while i go over 1000, and thatb way i have no issues.

I very much enjoy syncing my contacts with Outlook as opposed to the "cloud". I am also wondering when the phone will get ALL of the bluetooth profiles that My Nokia E71 has available to it by default. Once it gets all of those I may purchase one. Looks interesting.

Though I buy everything unlocked for use with ATT. That way, I can get the $15 unlimited data plan.

Love my G1. Patiently awaiting the Cupcake OTA update. I haven't rooted so far, but I eventually will.

Essential apps:

Locale (enough ink has been spilled over its sheer awesomeness)T-Mobile My Account (should have come preinstalled)ShopSavvy (the original G1 killer app)DopeWars (it's not a serious mobile devices until it runs Dope Wars)dgMoney (I require a decent checkbook app in every phone I get(Shake Awake (A quick shake wakes up the phone when it goes to sleep during a phone call)

Thanks for the link .milfox. Way better than all the video tutorials out there. I was just looking for a simple instruction set, and this is it.

Question/Bug

Has anyone noticed that if their G1 is in airplane mode, that it won't charge? I like to put my phones in airplane mode at night next to my bed so I don't get calls/email/texts, but leave them on so I don't have to start them up in the morning

Better off reflashing your own 1.5 (I use JF, it seems the best supported + has an autoupdate util), since if you root it, odds are you'll want a kernel that will support ip forwarding (the stock HTC one doesn't) which will need a non-HTC firmware anyways.

Also, I just checked, my G1 does charge in airplane mode. Having BT + 3G + Wifi + navi + music sucks down power like mad. I think if I did that without a charger setup, I'd only get 3 hours of use, tops.

Originally posted by .milFox:Better off reflashing your own 1.5 (I use JF, it seems the best supported + has an autoupdate util), since if you root it, odds are you'll want a kernel that will support ip forwarding (the stock HTC one doesn't) which will need a non-HTC firmware anyways.

Also, I just checked, my G1 does charge in airplane mode. Having BT + 3G + Wifi + navi + music sucks down power like mad. I think if I did that without a charger setup, I'd only get 3 hours of use, tops.

I was pondering a WM 6.5 phone, but the Fuze/Touch Pro were more expensive and had worse UIs (even after all tweaking was done .. I still have a HTC Wizard to play with if I want to screw with WM). And I checked my apps, pretty much all of them had replacements in Android.

upgraded to cupcake(thanks for the links), and the update is really nice. The onscreen keyboard is ok, but I wish it had autocorrection like the iphone, but surely that is "patented" by apple or some such, just like the lack of multitouch.

TNG style readout of the phone's sensors for wifi sniffing, position (lat and lon), and accelerometers. If I was going to tomorrow's movie, I'd definitely have it and be the envy of all the geeks there :P

So last night I was going to charge my phone in my bedroom with the plug in charger. Wait, what's this?! The charger is Mini-B USB and not the damn ExtUSB. Is this some kind of cruel joke, a screw up or am I overlooking something?

Other than that, I love the phone so far and really hope I catch up on my work by the time they send out 1.5('tis official now, late next week)